Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins: How Incompetence Tainted an American Icon

An insightful look at how Kmart's management destroyed the
company
Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins spins an intriguing tale of the missteps of
a retail giant who once had the industry in the palm of its hand
and foolishly let it all slip away. This engaging book weaves
corporate history in with financial analysis and commentary that
leaves the reader with a better sense of where Kmart has been and
what its potential is for a turnaround. This first in-depth
examination of Kmart clearly identifies and discusses the ten
missteps and miscalculations Kmart's CEOs have repeatedly made,
including resisting investments in technology, brand mismanagement,
and haphazard expansion, to name a few. Author Marcia Layton Turner
taps many of her vast contacts within the retail business community
to get the inside scoop on what really brought this once mighty
retail giant to its knees. Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins is written for
readers who find themselves wondering how a company with such
bright prospects could end up filing for bankruptcy.
Marcia Layton Turner (Rochester, NY) is the bestselling author of
The Unofficial Guide to Starting a Small Business and The Complete
Idiot's Guide to Starting Your Own Business. With an MBA in
corporate strategy and marketing from the University of Michigan,
she spent several years with Eastman Kodak in marketing and
marketing communications. She is currently a freelance
writer/author and ghostwriter for college-level business textbooks.
Turner has also written for several top magazines and Web sites.

MARCIA LAYTON TURNER is the bestselling author of The Unofficial Guide to Starting a Small Business. Writing for and about business for many years, Turner has covered small businesses, middle market companies, and major corporations. She has written for several top magazines and Web sites, including Business 2.0 and Office.com, and was the small business "guru" for iVillage.com’s AboutWork site and Macmillan’s Web community. With an MBA in corporate strategy and marketing from the University of Michigan, Turner spent several years with Eastman Kodak Company in marketing and marketing communications before starting her own marketing consulting firm, which she currently manages. Through her work as a consultant, she has been profiled or quoted as a marketing and start-up expert in numerous publications. She is also a frequent speaker on business management and marketing topics, delivering presentations to local, regional, and national audiences.

Kmart was Wal-Mart before there was a Wal-Mart.
Originally a chain of retail stores along the lines of F.W.
Woolworth's "five and dime" outlets, the former Kresge's evolved
into the larger Kmart in 1962, with 18 "super-stores." Wal-Mart
began the same year with a single rural Arkansas location.
Kmart cruised along nicely for the first 25 years or so, but by the
end of the 1970s profits began to dip, coincidental to Wal-Mart's
ascendance.
Business journalist Marcia Layton Turner offers a remarkable,
no-nonsense examination of Kmart's fall. Her carefully documented
tale relies on reporting from the trade and general press,
amplified by testimony and commentary from a number of expert
witnesses. It's a grim story; reading it is somewhat akin to
watching a train going off a mountain, but the tragedy of Kmart is
a tale of human incompetence, ignorance, greed and hubris.
Here, according to Turner, are Kmart's 10 fatal mistakes: 1. Brand
mismanagement; 2. Not knowing its customers; 3. Underestimating
Wal-Mart; 4. Lousy locations; 5. Ignoring store appearance; 6.
Technology aversion; 7. Supply chain disconnect; 8. Loss of focus;
9. Strategy du jour; 10. Repeating the same mistakes.
Squeezed by thrifty and technologically savvy Wal-Mart on one side,
and trendy, more fashion forward Target on the other, one wonders
if the once-mighty Kmart still has a prayer. Hard to say, but if
the chain's immediate history of monumental mismanagement offers
any clues, it's just a matter of time before Kmart flat-lines
— barring a miracle. (The Miami Herald (circ:
327,000), Sept. 29, 2003)

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